Hi, my name is Kevin Hicks, welcome to my YouTube channel The History Squad. Now today's video is
about the uh torture and execution of a 25 year old lady called Anne Askew, during the
latter reign of Henry VIII. What prompted me to do this was, I was recently at the Tower of London,
in London, and at the base of the White Tower they have the rack, the torture implement,
said to be one of the worst and a little mention about the fact that Anne Askew was
put to the rack. But there's more to the story than meets the eye. So Anne Askew you who was she
born in 1521 in Lincolnshire she was the fourth of five children to William Askew and Elizabeth
Wrotessley these are great names aren't they? Her father was a gentleman of the court of Henry VIII,
he also sat as a juror in the trial of some of the co-accused of Anne Boylen, so this is quite
a powerful family. She was also related to the chap who led the Pilgrimage of Grace, Robert Aske.
Now all is going well, Anne is very, very well educated, uh she's Protestant, she reads the
Bible in English and she will tell anybody around her about what she reads. Now later on
she becomes an anabaptist preacher and she will actually preach the sermons, she will memorize
verses from the Bible in public and this is where it all goes awry, because her sister Martha
is going to marry Thomas Kyme. He’s a staunch Catholic. Oh we've got this religion bit going on
here. And then Martha, bless her, bless her soul, dies, so William Askew, thinking about the money,
saves money by betrothing his daughter Anne to Thomas Kyme. So there you have a well-educated
young lady who reads the Bible in English, is a Protestant, is now married to a Catholic,
a staunch Catholic. One of the questions for Anne is all about the transubstantiation, the breaking
of the bread and wine in the Catholic mass. Have a look at it yourself, I'm not going to go there,
I'm not going to get tangled in these questions of religion. It's going to be an acrimonious
marriage, it's not going to go well, but she produces two children and then her husband
kicks her out! He's had enough of her then she moves to London where she becomes a gospeler,
a preacher walking around the street she preaches from the Gospels and she's also
accused here of plain speaking. In other words telling people the scriptures and verses of the
Bible the New Testament in plain English, it's frowned upon. In 1545 she's arrested,
her husband has been ordered ‘get your wife back to your house’. In other words, get her off the
streets of London will you. So she's taken back to Lincolnshire and she escapes! I love this girl,
she escapes, goes back to London and continues her preaching as a gospeler as an anabaptist.
There's just some extra little bits about Anne Askew. When when her husband threw her out
she used her maiden name, so she was Anne Askew again, also she petitioned the king. Don't forget
this is a, a powerful family really. Petitioned the King, Henry VIII to divorce her husband. She
was the first woman in England to do so, wow! And of course Henry VIII being the fair-minded
chap he was, refused it, right. Now there's another part to this uh Anne Askew, she was a poet
and a writer and she was the first lady to compose poetry in English, what a girl, but she ended
up getting arrested in March 1546 but she was released, but she was arrested again, May 1546,
but this time taken to the Tower of London. So poor Anne had been arrested and taken to the Tower
as a part of a sweep where 23 radical Protestants had been arrested on the
orders of the Bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner. He though, had a bit of a subplot,
you see he was in cahoots with the king. Although the king had brought great religious reforms in
England, you know founding the Church of England, he still retained much of the Catholic faith. In
fact many said he died a good Catholic, but he was against radical Protestants and he was
against heresy and this is part of what it's all about, except Gardner was going for the queen,
Katharine Parr. She had ignored the ‘Act of Advancement of the True Religion’. A new act
which basically said that women and those of the lower orders were not allowed to read the Bible in
English not even in private. This is suppression. So Gardiner was going for the Queen and singled
out Anne Askew believing that she would actually name the Queen as a radical Protestant who had
committed heresy. Boy was he wrong. So poor Anne finds herself in the Tower of London
and boy is she interrogated, but she will not give any names so they're going to torture her.
So permission is granted for her to be placed on the rack. Now the rack, it's one of the most
awful things you can imagine, you're stretched until your limbs can literally tear apart,
but it's illegal to torture a woman in England at this time, and when the Constable of the tower
Anthony Kingston is ordered to do it, he refuses. Wow, he goes to the King, hey King you know,
can you give me pardon? But I can't do this it's illegal, so the King says you're pardoned,
you're forgiven. But they still go ahead and they place poor Anne on the rack. She
describes how she was stripped of all of her clothes except for her shift, her undergarment.
She is then have the loops of the rope around her wrists and then her ankles,
and it's the Lord Chancellor Thomas, now I can never know if I'm pronouncing this right, it's
either Rothersley or Wriothesley and Richard Rich who actually do the stretching. They stretch us
so much that she tells you she was at least five inches suspended above the bed of the rack. Oh my
goodness me, the agony from that, she passes out. So they bring her around and they continue on.
They stretch her so much, there are two accounts. One says that her tendons snapped, the other says
that her joints were dislocated. Well if your tendons snap I'll tell you this there's nothing
holding your sockets in place. Shoulders, elbows, knees and ankles. The screams of this poor woman
being tortured illegally by the state in the Tower of London could be heard outside the White Tower,
she's in the basement, by people walking in the garden, in fact one of those was the wife of
the Constable little Tower who was walking their daughter. This is horrendous, but she would not
give any names, no evidence against the Queen. So when they’d finished with her she's taken to
a private house, apparently to recover. How do you recover from that? She is now condemned to death,
heresy. She's going to burn at the stake so she's taken to Newgate Prison and incarcerated there.
So Anne had been illegally tortured. Only one other woman had been tortured like this
in our history, Margaret Cheyne 1537, she'd been on the Pilgrimage of Grace.
But on the 16th of July 1546 Anne Askew is going to be executed in Smithfield with three others
John Lacelles, John Hemley and John Hadlam. But she can't walk from the prison, she can't walk
from Newgate because she's totally crippled and in absolute agony. Can you imagine having
your shoulders, your arms, your legs all torn from their sockets, yeah? It's enough when you
sprain your ankle isn't it? So they carry her on a chair and every jolt, every stumble causes her
absolute agony. And then in front of the crowd at Smithfield, the three guys are already chained up,
they drag so witnesses say, Anne from the chair to the stake. They then chain her,
ankles, legs but she's actually sat on, astride a little chair that they'd fastened to the post,
then her arms and then her neck. Now there are two versions here,
one is that the executioner wanted to dispose of these people quickly so he tied a big bag
of gunpowder around their necks and when the flames rose up, boom they're dead.
That's an English way. However there's an eyewitness who watched the whole thing
and he sees how they drag her to the post, how they sit her, straddle her he says on the chair,
how they chain her ankles, knees, waist, arms and neck to the post. How they light the fire.
And witnesses say she didn't cry out until the flames reached her chest.
She never told anybody any names, co-conspirators or anything against the Queen.
Eyewitnesses said she died so bravely. What a tale. Well in modern times now
she is regarded as a Protestant martyr, to me I think she must have been one heck of a girl.
Anne Askew, in my book one of the bravest women I've ever heard of.
Well such a sad story this is of Anne Askew. I'm not going to ask you if you enjoyed it yeah, but
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